Over the past year I've been politely informed by many readers that my posts (on both blogs) are to long and complicated (plus, not enough pictures). They take too long to read and consider. People lead busy lives and don't have the time to read long drawn out blog posts contemplating spiritual ideas. They want short chunks of relevancy, not discursive cause and effect considerations. There's no need to explain the reason why, just get me to the spiritual 'fix.'
I suppose this works well for those that believe that thoughts cannot be controlled and they arise and fall with no assistance from the mind whatsoever. Thus, why consider anything since you have no volition as to what thoughts you will consider since they come and go of their own accord. However, this blunts free-will and seems to allow a disorganized complexity to roam freely in the individual and collective consciousness.
Nevertheless, many of the spiritual blogs I currently read are condensing and abridging their essays or posts in order to draw in the "busy-man" (hyphenated to denote unity, since there really is NO purpose to the 'busyness' other than just the illusion of purpose). Of course, the "busy-man," and woman (recall the Tao of Pooh's "busybacksoon" caricature) are the ones Thoreau lamented as leading lives of "quiet desperation." As long as you attach to 'purpose' you can continue to ignore your underlying desperation which silently waits to engulf you through the consideration of your eventual death. But who wants to really consider that? And so we don't.
Is this contemplative expediency of the postmodern spiritual blogger the result of a desire for increased financial gain or is Spirit not worthy of long dissertations and thus more easily accessible through pithy platitudes of "infinite, divine, oneness"?
Many ancient masters claim that silence is the most appropriate means of apprehending Spirit. So why talk at all? Yet, we love to talk and hear our words. Now all we need do, as spiritual bloggers, is conform our words to the attention deficit inherent to the talking masses. If I can catch your attention with fancy spiritual slogans like "God IS" or "God Sucks" you just might read my first paragraph, but If I don't continue to provoke you and manipulate your attention-deficit, I will inevitably lose you.
The attention-deficient "busy-man" is always on the go and always seeking to maximize time with the goal of increasing productivity. Productive to 'what,' is not as important as simply displaying productivity. Therefore, any contemplative rambling will be seen as unproductive and thus, summarily dismissed as useless. This is why, at this point you should most likely cease reading this post as it as no productive goal whatsoever. Bye!
In fact, many of the spiritual blogs I have enjoyed in the past have substituted their usual deep inquiry into spiritual content with brief productive posts in order to accommodate the busy-man's need for quick and easily accessible 'forms' of spirituality (in fact, earlier on, I was also guilty of such abbreviated musings). Now, instead of deeply contemplating and considering the illusory nature of 'self' we have, "10 ways to recognize the illusory self" or "5 tips on letting go of self" (Of course, I blame Buddha and his damn "Noble Eight-Fold Path").
In these instances, Deep Spirit takes a back seat to the needs of the attention-deficient masses, increased website traffic and lofty one word expressions of the "Divine Mind." As if God, Nirvana or pure awareness is simply something to put on your "To Do" list. Sort of like "No. 8: Seek God" listed after "No.7: Balance Checkbook." Of course, this is primarily an American phenomenon, but it does seem to be catching on globally as "American Idol" gains a larger foreign audience.
But, who knows, maybe God should be abridged, compartmentalized and made to fit the "busyman" paradigm of productivity. Maybe the problem all along is that God/Source has been made inaccessible by the complex and complicated doctrines and dogmas of religion and austere spiritual practices. Obviously, the common "busyman" doesn't have time for that!
Of course, this would go against centuries of ancient spiritual tradition. But, as the brilliant Ken Wilber claims, we need a spirituality for the postmodern man. One that incorporates and utilizes the evolved mind of post-modern thinkers to substitute for the dogma of prerational mythology. However, I have found Wilber's "Integral Spirituality" to be as complex and complicated as many of the ancient practices and ideologies and a post-modern form of intellectual complexity that often seems as scientifically mythical as any Buddhist-Zen doctrine or Christian dogma.
Maybe postmodern man equates God with increased complexity and thus, as inaccessible to all but the most intellectually astute of us. But this is not to deny the complexity of prerational religions. Maybe transrational spirituality will evolve as short and to the point, thereby skipping all the intellectual musings and deep contemplating of the mystic.
The archaic mysticism of the past has been scientifically debunked and many astute postmodern thinkers are becoming atheists in response. Atheism is becoming the 'religion' of the intellectual and, of course, this means that science now predominates as the alter of our worship and fills the void, that our discarding of the archaic religions, leave behind.
We don't necessarily need to contemplate science in order to hold it in high esteem and essentially 'worship' it. You may feel somewhat bereft and guilty, if you have not chanted your Hail Mary's, meditated to the 'aum' or missed church the past two Sundays, but lose your electricity for long periods and you will experience an existential panic and dread that makes missing spiritual practices pale in comparison.
Yet, although we worship science, we rarely have an understanding of what electricity really is in terms of electromagnetic fields, watts, volts, etc, etc, but we do know we desperately need it. Therefore, the question is, do we really need God like we need electricity? The ancient and postmodern masters say unequivocally, YES. But our science worshipping society tends to demonstrate, NO, we're just fine without it, thank you.
Seems to me we can get along quite well without thoughts of the Divine, since as opposed to electricity many would claim that religion has been nothing but trouble from the start. Others would state that electricity is no less innocent in the suffering it has caused. Yet, we seem to easily accept the suffering caused by electricity or the sudden lack thereof (if the bill wasn't paid). We have NOT accepted the suffering caused by religion and thus, evolved consciousness ignores ancient mythological presentations of God for intellectual atheistic science.
So now we have spiritual bloggers conforming to science in getting the "good word" out. We don’t understand the basic tenets of science but we know we need it. We don’t understand the basic tenets of complicated religious-spiritual doctrines and we seem to feel it doesn’t matter because we really do NOT need it. Therefore, short controversial posts about Spirit should grab the attention, or lack thereof, of the public and bring in the almighty dollar. Because, let’s face it, even more than science, Mammon, the god of riches, seems at present to be our highest ideal and we worship that in deep meditative focus even more than science. Our failing economy deserves deep contemplation and concise strategic measures to increase productivity, while deep spiritual contemplation merely dissolves into nothingness.
Damn! Looks like I’ve gone and written too much again...
Thanks,
mike S
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